


if it takes all night or a hundred years

by secretsarenotforfree



Category: Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Lia and Andre are mentioned but they're trash so, this is about the events of 2x07, this is just introspective idk what to say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 14:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20047234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: Everything feels like lead. Sunken, prickly with long asleep limbs that are Tandy’s but not. The memories of Del being a creepy baby bird stitch together slowly in her mind, something more solid than the white hot half ones lurking in her mind. Her eyes feel sticky, the skin around them dry, and tense. She hates this room. She hates the sound of Lia’s intense brainwashing and her betrayal, to those who had suffered as she had and those she was still hurting.She wants freedom. Tandy wants to move.(She wants Ty.)





	if it takes all night or a hundred years

**Author's Note:**

> i've got two other fanfictions for these two started...when they'll get done, i have no clue. but for now, here is an introspective on what i thought maybe tandy was feeling all throughout 2x07, so there's references to what could have happened if del hadn't gained hope. i don't have too much to say, just that i hope you like! and the title is from 'lovely' by billie eilish and khalid.

Andre’s talking.

She knows that he is, processes and hears the infuriatingly even tempered tones, the steady gaze and shine of his horn, but she can’t hear him. All Tandy can focus on is the memory that rings over and over in her mind, louder than any of her other half lives.

(Dark red, staining her hands, the cold of support groups linoleum floor, the oppressive smell of dust in her nostrils as she begged Ty to not leave her alone like this because he couldn’t, he’d _ promised _ \- he had to, because he was Tandy’s person, he needed to go out there and be _ good _ and be _ Tyrone _ and if he was going to go, take Tandy first - )

_ I shot him dead_, Andre says, and Tandy’s furious, because how could she not? God was cruel, she knew that. Her life was a testament to it, broken promises and acid breaths, boys who didn’t know the meaning of the word no and a father who’d betrayed her deeper than she’d ever imagined, but he couldn’t be this monstrous. 

Maybe this wasn’t the real world. Maybe it was one of those half lives, those alternate realities that Andre constructed of from music, grief, and guilt, to show Tandy how imperfect any life she was involved in was going to turn out. All facets of her, versus Ty’s that no matter how slight a version of her own still managed to slide under her armor.

(_ Can you trust me? _

_ Yeah. You seem okay. _)

It was only her luck that her nightmare world was the one she remembered the most vividly, away from the exploding rig, stolen car, and supremacist bodega; no, it was the one with Tyrone by her side that stuck with her, the hug that had felt so real she could still smell his scent if she concentrated, the long since memorized texture of his hoodie under her fingertips. He had been _ looking _ for her, it was in getting vengeance for her that he’d been _ hurt _and she could never forgive herself for that. Was it real? Was it fake? Could she see out of the yawning black hole that had appeared in her soul, her heart, a place that was bigger than she’d expected, where he belonged? Low laughter, charming grin, and soulful eyes, the whirl of stars she felt in her gut when he said her name like she charmed him. Tyrone. Her Tyrone Johnson.

(Oh God, she doesn’t know if she can fight in a world without him. Tandy isn’t sure she can - even _ wants _to - keep pushing on when a portion of her soul has been ripped from her, bloody and broken. She’s off kilter, her balance is fucked.)

Her t-shirt feels real. Heather grey, purchased in a pack with her mom by her side, usually prime for when she was relaxing at home, sans a bra. Nothing about this place was comfortable or relaxing, wood panels and cheap carpet, dusty nightside lamps and an absence of anything warm. The low quality fabric of the over quilt catches on her skin, and her feet feel suffocated, left in shoes and socks for far longer than expected. Her eyes are puffy and an after high still thrums through her, memories of times she left behind.

Tandy is sure that the rip roaring headache she’s got tearing through her temples is definitely real, edged with fire and fucking up her vision. Tandy sees Andre for sure, though she wishes she wouldn’t, but every other blink greets her with a different scene, a silk screen over the harsh lines of the world. A blink, and there’s the clink of champagne glasses, Tyrone’s mom actually likes her, and her future is busted toes and prima status. Another, and she sees two runaways, uncertain and messy, but still together. How is it that those options seem better? At least there's a Ty in them.

As much as Tandy wants to deny, wants to not believe that Andre is telling the truth, it all settles on her like an icy weight, the fire of her desperate words to the unquestionably evil man in front of her being snuffed out by the lack of her daggers in her palms.

Then there is Lia, and a hulking man that she’s never seen before, and she finds it in her to still fight, because Ty or no Ty, he wouldn’t have wanted her to go out like this. NO matter how bad her body aches, how defeated she feels, and how scared she is that Lia’s right, and her constantly work to push others away has fucked her over in the long run.

To be fair, Tandy’s defensiveness had never exactly awarded her any points with people, but she’d done a spectacular job recently at letting her own bullheadedness get in her own way. On some level, she could see that, but her conviction wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t help herself - she was a bitter fighter in a lot of ways, and hope wasn’t even on the table for her right now. What else was she expected to do?

_ When you have nobody? No one’s gonna save you. _

She ignores the gigantic tear torn through her center. She pushes down the rising tsunami of fear and hopelessness, and sets her teeth. If she was going down, Tandy was going down kicking and screaming.

* * *

_ Worry threatens to mix itself with panic the longer he goes without finding her, but Tyrone keeps looking. He has to. This isn’t Tandy, she wouldn’t do something like this, and he’s worried about her. She does a fantastic job at making people she’s stronger than she actually is, and seeing any sort of indication that she’s _ not _ made of granite and stone hard belief has him shaken. The remains of the weed nursery are battered, and he hates that she got in a fight without him. Hates that he wasn’t there, to have her back, to make sure she walked away safe. Tandy was his responsibility, his person, (his girl), and he knew without a doubt that if he didn’t look for her, no one was going to, or at least they wouldn’t until it was too late. Logically, he knew she could more than take care of herself...but something felt different this time. It isn’t until he shakes the hand of the skeevy counselor whose words invade and ripple like an earworm that doubt settles even further. _

_ He doesn’t trust him. He isn’t quite sure why. _

* * *

Everything feels like lead. Sunken, prickly with long asleep limbs that are Tandy’s but not. The memories of Del being a creepy baby bird stitch together slowly in her mind, something more solid than the white hot half ones lurking in her mind. Her eyes feel sticky, the skin around them dry, and tense. She hates this room. She hates the sound of Lia’s intense brainwashing and her betrayal, to those who had suffered as she had and those she was still hurting.

She wants freedom. Tandy wants to move.

(She wants _ Ty _.)

And for Lia to stop _ touching _her, to stop manipulating what isn’t hers because goddammit, she might not treat it the best sometimes but this was her body, and her skin crawls with each piece of clothing that gets removed. The anger is hard to hold onto when she can barely keep conscious and every time she reaches her way into the light, something has changed and she’s not wearing her own things. It’s almost as if Lia is stripping parts of her away with every piece she loses, so she dedicates her time to making sure no tears leak out the corner of her eyes. 

She lays there for longer than Tandy can put together, is moved against her will (as it all is) by the man who’d she run into her escape attempt, a ragdoll of limp limbs and furious, sad eyes. She is placed upon the bed, and Del starts to fix her face. _ Fix your face. _Tandy had always hated that expression. Why did there have to be something wrong with her face in the first place? Her mom had never minded, dropping kisses on cheeks that were cherub like in her mostly happy youth, so similar in pictures of her mother when she was young. Neither had her previous targets, not when they were telling her nasty things with alcohol soaked breath and eating at her mouth like she was meat and not a person.

She’d been using her body as a tool to get what she’d wanted for years, but she did her best to make sure it didn’t take her places she didn’t want to be it. At first, she’d had drugs on them, and Liam at her back. Then she’d had her own, and she still did fine, but it wasn’t anything like having Tyrone at her back, and none of that was like having her body be something that others treated as disposable. 

_ THIS IS MINE, _ Tandy wanted to scream. _ HANDS OFF. _

* * *

_ He doesn’t care where these hints are coming from. Doesn’t understand it. Just cares that it seems to be leading him closer to her. He doesn’t know why his feelings are yo-yoing inside of him, he just knows that the more pieces he puts together, the angrier he gets. He’d already been pretty pissed off at the thought that it was happening to anyone, but when it was Tandy, it was personal, more personal than the streets he grew up on, and he couldn’t have that. Couldn’t let her stay there any moment longer than she had to. _

_ So he found an ambulance, and when he growls at the driver “Where is she.” Tyrone’s tone brokers no argument. This isn’t a question. This is a demand. _

* * *

Her heart has fallen through her chest, her feet, to the first floor of the motel and nearly the core of the earth and Tandy can’t control her breathing. Panic is setting in something serious, because she’s run out of escape options, and there’s a man in the room with her. He comes in front of her, and as much as she’s focusing her gaze on him she can’t see him through the sharp fear that runs through her vision. 

She’s looking, and she can’t see, and she’s so scared, and then - a _ glow _.

Fuzzy, comforting, illuminating her face and gifting her with the fizzy presence of her daggers, and her hope comes flooding back. Tandy can fight back now, and _ win _. So she does. She busts through walls and shoves men into sidetables, and with every move she is fighting back for all the moments that she couldn’t before.

“Tandy!”

She blinks, but he’s real, and he’s here, his shadows curling from him like a blessed dark halo, and the relief she feels is so fierce and so vast she almost drowns in it as her lungs raggedly draw in fresh air. He’s _ here _ and he’s real, and there’s the cleft in his chin and the way that his teeth dig into his bottom lip when he grins and all she wants to do is ball her hands in his shirt and breathe him in until the stank of the unwashed sheets and Lia’s touch is off of her, but then he falls and Tandy’s certainty falls to pieces once more, holding his head so it isn’t on the ground and begging, pleading for him to stay with her, because she did not want to _ do _ this without him. This was real, and this was _ so much worse _in all the ways that counted.

Eventually, they get through it.

Tandy is stumbling through her house in a loose t-shirt and a sweatshirt that was once Ty’s and when his arm goes around her it’s all she can do but nod and believe him.

_ We’re gonna get him. You know that right? _

Tandy did. But it only feels real when he’s by her side.

  


(Lia says that hope doesn’t exist. She’s wrong. Because Ty is Tandy’s hope. And as long as he’s there, by her side, supporting her, she’s got it.)

(With him, she'd never be fighting on her own.)

  



End file.
